Friday, December 31, 2010

It's been a busy break. It went by so fast that I still can't believe that I have to already go back to school on Tuesday! But, let's talk about what's happening in 2011 next year, like, tomorrow perhaps. :P

I'll do a quick recap of what happened ever since I went to my grandma's house last week and then I'll prolly have to get off and clean my room since my mom's been nagging about it forever. Or maybe I'll just read a book, lol; I have plenty to choose from. :P

So Shelle and I drove up to grandma's house on Thursday. We hung out and on Friday, Shelle, Nicole, Megan, and I went out to Arte 3 to eat some bingsoo cuz we really wanted some. This time, tho, Shelle and I wanted to try the pot bingsoo cuz we only tried the fruit bingsoo last time. And I ordered a waffle, too, cuz I wanted to eat it again, lol.

There wasn't much of a difference between the fruit bingsoo and the pot bingsoo, tho, cuz the pot bingsoo just had red beans in it in addition to the fruit and stuff. Luckily, we remembered to bring our camera, so we actually have pictures of it this time!

We stayed at grandma's house until Saturday, Christmas Day, where we went to one of our Aunt and Uncle's Christmas parties where it actually SNOWED!!! We actually had a white Christmas in the south! Shelle and I had to leave to go back to our grandma's house after a couple of hours because our parents didn't want us driving in the snow if it got even thicker and the roads icier.

The next day, Megan came over so we opened our presents for each other. I gave Megan some Ugg boots that she wanted, which she promptly wore. I gave Nicole a hoodie that I thought would look good with her sleeveless puffy jacket that she bought with us the last time we were there, and I gave Shelle a card that said that I would take $250 off of her tab that she owes me.

I got a penguin pillowpet and a pair of red converses from Shelle and a bumblebee pillowpet from Megan, which I was so happy about. I've been telling everyone I knew how much I wanted a pillowpet throughout the year. XD Nicole never had a chance to go shopping, so she said that she'd get us something when we went to the mall later that day. At the mall, I made her buy me a belt that I wanted as my Christmas present. :D

After shopping, we went out to eat at a Japanese steakhouse. I forgot the name, but I'll post some pics later when I can get the camera from Shelle. I ordered the Ten Don which was some tempora shrimp with rice that had a sauce on top of everything and I also bought some sushi since I always eat it whenever we went to Japanese restaurants. The food was so good! Although the portion of rice was so much! I was so full that I couldn't eat it all.

Then, we went to play at Best Buy since we still had some time before Tron Legacy came on at the movies. We wandered around for a while before finding the Xbox Kinect and goofing off there. It was so funny watching Megan and Shelle compete against each other on the sports in the game cuz their avatars were so funny.

So we went to watch Tron Legacy, which was pretty okay. The graphics were really good --I really like futuristic types of movies-- and the plot was also pretty believable (you know, no bad plot-holes and stuff), but I didn't really like it that much. It wasn't very funny either, which is prolly a major reason why I wasn't so into it. For a PG movie that had such good hype, there wasn't much comic relief and stuff.

After that, we went back to grandma's house. We stayed there until Tuesday where we went back home. On Wednesday, Shelle and I went to the farm for lunch where I practiced driving afterwords and made plans with Krista to have dinner with Shelle, Chris, and I at O'Charley's and spend the night after that. Since we passed by her house on the way home, we would easily be able to pick her up later when we went home.

Her parents agreed, so we picked her up, went home to shower and clean up, and then went to go eat. Shelle and Chris's friend, Aaron, worked at O'Charley's, so they wanted to go eat there to see him and bother him, lol.

After eating at O'Charley's we went to Target because some of Shelle's other friends were there. Krista and I split up with them and looked around the store trying to find a rubix cube cuz Krista always wanted one. Unfortunately, we didn't find one. And then we had to leave cuz Target was closing in a couple of minutes.

Since Shelle and her friends still weren't done goofing off and being obnoxious, they decided to go to Wal-Mart since it's open 24/7. :P Again, Krista and I split up with the others and immediately went to the toy section of the store in search for a rubix cube. I found a bike lying in the middle of an aisle, so I quickly got on it and tried to get around the aisle on it. Since I hadn't been on a bike for a long time, I really sucked. I kept on swerving and leaning on the sides, almost hitting products off of the shelves, lol. It was fun.

Krista eventually found a rubix cube and I found a pokemon ball stress-reliever that I wanted. After that, we went around the other parts of the store, browsing around and looking for Shelle and her friends. After some random stuff, we finally found them and were on the way out of the store after finding some humus for Chris and paying for everything.

The next day, yesterday, Shelle took Krista and me to go watch Black Swan which was so...I can't say weird cuz it sounds derogatorily, but it's definitely far from normal. It was intense. And there is definitely a reason why the movie was rated R, lol. :P

After that, we went to Sonic to get drinks since it was during Happy Hour, and then we went to the Riverside Mall since neither Krista nor I have ever been there yet. We went dress shopping at Dillards since Shelle wanted to get a dress and Krista was in a dress phase. Shelle ended up buying two dresses since she couldn't choose which one she wanted, and Krista didn't get any either since she didn't have any occasions to wear them, and her parents would probably flip if they saw the dresses.

We walked around for a while before going home where we ate some chicken that my mom bought at Churches. They were really good, prolly since we were so starving, lol. Krista stayed the night again and just left a couple of hours ago today.

And that's basically what's happened since my last update.

On to some other topics...

So I've looked at my piles of books and at my 2010 book challenges that I entered. This year, I entered 13 challenges and I've finished 9 of them. That's really good in my opinion since it was my first year doing any challenges. Granted, I had some pretty low goals since I wasn't sure if I even had any books or time to accomplish any of them, but still, I'm happy.

Also, since I now have plenty of books and know my relative achieving goals, I think I'll be able to do even better next year. However, I'm not entering as many challenges as I did this year. 13 was just so much. I think I'll enter less challenges but with higher goals.

I'll have a post of all of the challenges I'm entering for next year up in a couple of days, so watch out!

This is the last of the year! Can't believe how much I've posted this year compared to my earlier years. I had 42 posts in 2008, 47 in 2009, and this is my 78th post for 2010 which is almost twice as much as my other years' posts! I can't believe it! I can't wait to see how many posts I'll have by the end of next year!

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

A few months back near the end of October when I was in the beginning of a book buying craze, I made a promise to myself that I would finish at least one stack of books before Christmas Break ended. This oath was witnessed by Krista since her exclamations of how I was turning into a hoarder--after seeing my stacks of TBR books--made me realize how bad my book shopping addiction was turning into since I hadn't been reading so much because of school and life getting in the way.

So months passed and I read whenever I could remember or had the time. I think I'm not doing so bad since I finished quite a few books over the past month, although half of the books are manga... -__-"

Here is the stack of books that I've finished reading so far since the start of my promise. However, I might have left some books out since I didn't exactly keep track of all of the books I read since I started the goal.

And then, here are the stacks of my TBR books. It's A LOT compared to the amount of books that I've finished in the last few months, I know. ;__;

Luckily, looking at those seemingly endless piles help encourage me to read even more, which is a good thing for sure. So I'm gonna go and read some more now! :D

Actually, I'm going up to my grandma's house tomorrow and staying there for a while, so I'm not sure if I'll be able to read that much. We'll see. :P

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

I've watched so many movies this past week that I'm practically in shock. I haven't seen so many movies in such a short period of time in ages. When I count the amount of movies that I've watched recently, it's actually not that much, but for someone who watches movies once or twice a month at the most, it's a lot, lol.

On Wednesday, I went out to watch Tangled with Emily, Sydne, Shanice, and Jackie. I love that movie! It's so cute and hilarious! I was cracking up the whole time! :D I missed the first minute of the movie, though, waiting for Shanice to get her ticket and stuff, and I missed some other parts in the movie informing Jackie and Sydne where we were and stuff since everyone except for Emily were late. We are so unorganized, lol. But yeah, great movie. I'm totally buying the DVD when it comes out.

After the movie ended, Jackie's mom was going to pick her up, and Emily had to leave during the last half of the movie for an appointment (she had already seen Tangled once so she was okay), so it was just Sydne, Shanice, and me. We were hungry so we went to get a pizza at Mellow Mushroom and then went goofing off at Walgreens cuz Shanice was still kind of hungry. After that, we went back to my place to have a movie marathon since I found out that I didn't have to babysit that day after all.

Since school started, I bought some DVDs randomly and they started accumulating since I never had time to watch them. There were a couple of movies that Sydne and Shanice wanted to watch or said that I had to watch with them, so that day seemed like a good day to get started on the evergrowing pile. :P

So we bought some snacks for the movies at Walgreens and then went home. We started watching Brokeback Mountain, but we weren't really paying attention to it since it was so slow. Then, things got awkward when my mom came home and there was a kiss scene and it was just really awkward cuz you can totally see the TV in the living room in the kitchen and I had no idea if my mom could see the two guys making out on screen, but yeah...uncomfortable for sure.

So we stopped the movie and started watching Fame which was much better. I love watching movies like Fame where there's dancing and singing and stuff cuz I don't know, although I feel unaccomplished watching the characters in the movie do something in their life with their talents, it makes me motivated into doing stuff, too, you know what I mean?

It was getting late and Sydne had to get home by 7:30, and since she was the driver, Shanice had to go home, too. But we made plans to finish watching the rest of the movies the next day, Shanice coming earlier since she didn't have any finals like I did, unlike Sydne. We agreed to watch one of the movies that Sydne had already watched while we weren't there, so we ended up watching Shutter Island. I kind of figured out the ending halfway through the beginning, and I was a little sleepy by the time we finally finished it, so I didn't really enjoy the movie that much.

After that, we started watching The Dark Knight, but we didn't get that far cuz I wanted to go out and eat sushi even though I wasn't that hungry. I was feeling restless, which I guess is because I knew that I wouldn't have any other chance to go out except for on my days off on Sunday to do anything for the rest of the break because of my babysitting job.

We agreed to go eat as Sushi Thai since neither of the two had eaten there yet, although I had and their sushi is great! When we got there, though, it wasn't open, which was really weird since it was just a random Thursday afternoon. So we went to the Coldstone Creamery which was close by to get milkshakes since we all weren't that hungry anyway. Their milkshakes are pretty good! I got a strawberry one and it was really good. :3

Then, we decided to prank some of our friends since we had nothing else to do. We were going to Ding-Dong-Ditch them or prank call them using the *69 restricted number, but every time we tried calling our friends while idling in front of their house in Sydne's car, they all wouldn't answer their calls, so our attempts at pranking failed. Epically, lol.

Then we went to LD's place and knew that he was home since we saw his red bike outside. Shanice and I went out and knocked on his door real quick and ran back into Sydne's car who was all ready to gun it out of the neighborhood. It was hilarious. We didn't even know of he heard our knock or not, but later that night, when I got on Facebook, I read one of his statuses, and it said that he was gonna get revenge on the kids who knocked on his door the next time they did it. XD

We're such bad kids, lol. :P

After that, we went home and just talked about stuff while the kids came home. We eventually started doing karaoke even though the batteries in the mics were dead, just singing along to the lyrics on the screen. We went through the old songs in our childhood like the Pokemon theme song (Shanice and I couldn't believe that Sydne had never heard of it. What kind of childhood had she had?! :P) and NSYNC. Then we found Linkin Park songs and were singing all of those. It was fun.

They had to leave, though, after Mommy called telling me that I had to take the kids over to their house and babysit over there. So that was the end of it for that day.

On Saturday, I finally watched Howl's Moving Castle when I was babysitting. I now know why it's gotten so much praise: it's fantastic! At first, I wasn't that interested in it, but the animation and storytelling definitely caught my attention. Studio Ghibli movies' animations always get my attention. There's something about the way animations move and look that always keep me intrigued. And the movie was also hilarious.

Then, yesterday, Shelle and I watched The Voyage of the Dawn Treader which was also good! I love the Chronicles of Narnia movies as much as I love the Harry Potter movies. It only sucked that Susan and Peter weren't in the movie that much. And Eustace was SUCH an annoying character in the beginning. Oh my god, I just wanted to shove a sock in his mouth and tie him to a tree whenever he appeared on the screen in the beginning. :P

After eating Chinese for dinner with Shelle's friend Madeline at a restaurant nearby where I found out that one of my classmates' family owns the restaurant and who also works there, I watched Tangled again with my sis since she still hadn't watched it and really wanted to watch it, especially since she had a coupon for her ticket, lol. I finally got to watch everything, and I really liked Tangled anyway, so it was all good.

So yeah, those are all of the movies that I've watched in the past week, which, really isn't even over yet, since it's only Tuesday. It's not that much compared to many people, but it's definitely a lot to me.

Plus, I started and finished watching this anime called Baccano! yesterday since the Internet was being weird at my cousins' house while I was babysitting, and it also wasn't working at my house when I got home later last night, which was very odd since it was working fine earlier in the day.

Baccano! is awesome once you start understanding how the story is told, and once you start recognizing everyone in the super huge cast. At first, things didn't make much sense in the beginning, but as the episodes went on and the intertwining plots came together, it was great! Really good storyline and amazing characters. I'm kind of sad that there isn't a clear ending, but leaving it open-ended is a good idea since it lets the audience come up with whatever ending they want. :3

I got all of the manga on sale over at DeepDiscount when they were having this megasale for Christmas. Some of the Vampire Knight volumes were out of stock, which is why I only have some of the volumes right now and why they're so random, lol.

Friday, December 17, 2010

A couple of days ago, I created a tumblr account because I kept on finding so many cool pictures that I really liked on there. :P I thought I'd share some of pics that really caught my attention on here.

If you want to see my tumblr account, my page is over here. I basically used the same name for my tumblr account since I use both accounts to blog about things that catch my attention and stuff.

I think I'll just do sporadic posts of tumblr pics that I like whenever they accumulate to be too much. :D

I would have understood cell division so much faster if they used cupcakes as examples, lol.